Priya Echo's Adventure - Book One Awakening

Episode 10

CHAPTER 32 - UFFHILL AND UMLAVE - UMLAVE RETURNS TO THE OLD QUEENDOM

“Oh, I love red velvet cake, it’s so gory it makes me feel like a gladiator when I eat it” Echo said to him at last night’s party as they lounged in the corner, presumably for the sole purpose of making him laugh as she stole a slice. Now he was thankful that there were leftovers in the refrigerator, so he took out a plate and sat at the end of the dinner table to finish it off. “Apparently, I’m going to have to finish this myself” Uffhill smiled, thinking of how Umlave had left days previous, down through the chamber on some personal journey to Recapture for a stop, then to the ruins of her old queendom to see the trail gate once more. Since she had forgotten to turn off the television, the static had fallen off and collected into a ball that bounced around in the living room. It didn’t make any noise so it wasn’t really a problem. He looked back at the plate. Eventually the piece was reduced in size to such a degree that he scoured the surface for a final bite. “Hey darling, did you save me a piece?” Umlave asked, plopping camping bags onto the floor. “I’ll trade you for souvenirs” he offered, leaning over for a kiss as she sat down at the table besides him. There’s something very attractive about a plate that’s been scraped clean, almost peaceful, like the mind’s resting state. Uffhill’s eyes glanced up, then, kicking the floor the chair scooched back almost a foot. Every so often patrons evolve and take on new forms. That was common knowledge, until it happens to someone you know. “Do you like my new look?” Umlave asked, sliding her hand across the top of her chest over a body of paper skin tattooed with intricate mandalas of brash calligraphy. “How did you … is that paper?” he gaped, studying the overt difference. There is something about the peristalsis of red velvet cake that is more soothing than an ordinary swallow, and it turned his mind to the calm of the remainder of his body. Umlave watched him stare as the ball of tv static arced over the position of his head from farther away in the living room. “Good read darling, it is a little less smooth than normal and more fragile, but a good fit” she replied. “I would think so, it’s just a little … different” the patron countered. Imperceptibly shifting back in the chair, she redirected her line of sight to the tarnished plate of smeared crimson, “do you like different?”. Abandoning his fear, he interlocked his fingers into hers, pressing them tight, “I’ve always loved different”. Paraphernalia from the camping trip crumbled out of the condensed mass of the suitcase between the oval shaped mouth of the zipper. It fell onto the floor diverting his attention, allowing her to return hers to its previous station. Applying the other hand, he polished it with the inquisitive cheek of his palm. Umlave felt a compelling draft of affirmation pass through her, the blurry aspects of his features became definite. But she should have known better. “This looks like wallpaper, all these patterns …” he witnessed, until the object was retrieved in a quick singular motion. “oh, so it’s like wallpaper is it? You just like it because it reminds you of that girl you dated when you were a local on the trail … what was her name again? Va?” she charged. “That one was too fierce for her own good, but that’s long gone, don’t look at me like that” he relented, parrying off guilt drenched stares in quick succession. “Alright, if you can tell the difference then … that’s a start” she said, sensing his keen juvenile anticipation in the unwrapping of a flimsy garment. Heeding an unspoken request Umlave, without moving a finger tore back the paper layer covering both her hands, wrists and the portion of her head to her shoulders. “How did this happen?” Uffhill cried. The harmless ball of static had hit the back of his chair at just the exact moment that the remainder of his wife was exposed to room temperature. “So first I meandered through Recapture. There is barely anything there except for a few dough farmers, and some surviving dreamstuff golems. Eventually I got to my old queendom. Happily, those oaks that I loved so much survived, whole acres of them. That fact made me feel pretentious, but in a good way. Then I went further, past the estate of verdant simplicity which a local is preserving. It was pretty boring until I found the highway and went down that way through Desensitize, to the main square where the ruins of the old trail gate are piled up. Looking them over I realized something fascinating. The Couple and Echo have shed so many secrets, I doubt they can remember even one out of ten of them”. “Keeper, the realm was a lot simpler back then, what were your first thoughts when you saw those undisturbed ruins?” the patron requested, his solicitation tinged with the gold of nostalgia. Pouring through the medium of the fiefdom, the divisions of the apartment were substituted by walls of memory. Both listened, hearing birdsong through the dense aether laden wind. “I was gatekeeper” she whispered to herself, remembering the days that she would permit those who sacrificed a dream for the Couple to float through mandalas which she had crafted. Examining the signature of the ruins, a less than obvious thought occurred, “the gate is a scar? A disembodied scar from the moment that Echo’s ghost escaped and returned to her body? Normally a ghost exists a body incorporeally without creating a scar”. So much made little sense. There was the Cezit Order, who were dreamstuff replicants that unknown to her dwelt within the trail gate. “That is why whispers flowed into the gate” she said, “and the order would call to collect the whispers and usher them unto the gate, and they would themselves hide by tucking themselves within a whisper and leading the others”. This had all been told to her by Valco. “Wait just a minute!” he shouted, halting the perceptual retelling. “Yes, I thought that hint to be rather confounding as well, but it’s true” the patroness guaranteed, batting back neural ripples of incredulity. In Uffhill’s mind, the previous night flashed before his eyes, the way Echo was reclining on the chair, happy as a lark from the synthesis of overeating, good company and four cans of cherry omelet soda. Because of everything, he had not given a second thought of when she thieved a slice of red velvet cake from off plate. Ideas quickly reshaped themselves, conclusions snapped into place like ruthless architecture. “Are you telling me that she … we all knew she was different … that she is less perfect in a certain way than an average local? If the ghost tore through and made a scar, it can only mean she was … let me rephrase that. Echo is delicate. Is that what you are saying?” he questioned, a mask of epiphany causing her to witness the boldness in the features of his face, something that had many a time belonged to her in full. “Obviously when you take into consideration the past eons, she has grown a lot stronger with every strife that we have faced” Umlave answered, comfortable in her ability to lecture on the prose of history. Drawing him back into the fiefdom, he saw Umlave retrace her steps to the Pyramid of Darkness where the dust of the book of whispers had become the southern desert. Near the periphery some clusters of rocks were hollowed out by the wind into elongated flutes. Along the length of one of them was a caveat scratched into the stone, but of course it was meant for mortal men. An elderly hermit crab crouched by the end of one of them, sitting in the hollow and stroking a long white beard with its claw, regarding her. “Anyway, before I was so politely interrupted, I found an oasis at the center of that territory with a crisp pool …” she visualized, returning to the story, “Floating to the bottom I was distracted by the motions of life and without realizing it became embedded into the rock beneath a bed of coral. Colorful entities that lived in that stratum pulsated around me. Then cracking open, the rock gave way, and my body had become this white sponge coral. I thought, ‘I am like that sponge within the center of the skull’. I let the little fish and other things swim between the tiny spaces, tickling me. Have you ever been tickled under water? It is really great. Then propped my hands over the edge, lifting myself back up onto the sand. Before I knew it, a portion of sand which had been called by the wind rushed up to meet me and washed over my body until igniting in flame. Dust became pulp and molded itself as paper, draping over my figure. I looked over at the paper of my torso and saw mandalas imprinted by the ink, alternating white and black” the patroness visualized in words for his consideration. It was the ink of the book of whispers. “Did you hear the secret of the book of whispers?” he pleaded, needing the atoms of veracity hidden in the kernels of magic, wreathed in formulae and hypothetical gossip. Looking across the table, he examined the white sponge coral, porous and in the shape of human beauty. “Just as the Couple performed the RODI, ushering dream from their minds to the base reality, I am that semipermeable barrier of the skull from which it can flow through numerous pores” she pontificated, then stuck out a pink tongue which now had the character of the cerebrum. When tempers soar, a good principal to rely on is restraint, but that was not the emotion that prevented her from telling him the rest. That was shame. For as the patroness returned to normality from hyperventilating at the strain of quick evolution, she could feel a burning sensation, and stuck out her tongue. Resting on it was a drop of coffee like a perfect pearl that one would find within a clam. It lifted off of her tongue and hovered in the air before her, then vanished. It had happened so quickly that she could not in hindsight genuinely tell whether it was of importance. One cannot lose face when in the pursuit of a listener, flighty as they are. The events afterwards were of little import, so she briefly summarized the trek backwards. How at the outskirts of the oasis was a tribe that instead of living and dying transitioned through states of visibility and invisibility, how they enjoyed her constellation salamander form and the way the nodes of grain-stars emit light which diluted and draped the body of the amphibian. Satisfied, they let her gobble them up in her mouth and waddle back up to district, where calling upon the skulls embedded in the fabric of the wreckage of Recapture they flocked to her and under her command destroyed the trail gate, it’s substance being communicated to her body by the action of their destruction. Miserably, a shockwave from the Reverse Incarnation, Visioness’s final attack against Echo in their battle struck her, and the tribe were forced to nurse her back to health over a day, feeding her bowls of soup and wafting the aroma into her face with fans. “I brought them back with me to the portion. They all work now in an underpants factory, but it is much better than living in the desert” she finished. “Darling, that’s enough, your new look is great. I love it” Uffhill relented, his mind weary from heeding such a enterprising memory. She smiled back, then noticed how a smear of the red velvet cake remained at the corner of his mouth, so she tore off a piece of her paper-skin and used it as a napkin to dab the mess away. Maybe one day … practice for when they had a baby. In the other room the ball of static rebounded until it became stuck between the space of the couch and the wall … that place that’s really hard to get out, and where no one would find it until much later. Uffhill sighed with exhaustion and leaned back in his chair. Thoughts of the transformation revolved in his mind. A wife made of paper and coral. He was not amused. And that old flame that wasn’t flammable was starting to sound pretty good.

CHAPTER 33 - PHANTOMESS AND THE PARENTS

Phantomess reclined against the driver’s seat, attuned to the whisper of the falling rain as it tapped against the windshield. A dense sheet rolled overhead as the portion’s skies wrung water from its roiling heights. In all directions huddled a traffic jam of cars, the casual rude horn pealing before its consequence faded away, as some eagerly squeezed through narrow spaces. Joining the ranks of others in anonymity never failed to be an unsung enticement. And every so often a patron could foster their idleness with a good ride, rather than exerting themselves through phenomenological motion. Tiny paths of droplet water weaved their way to the bottom. Not much could be seen without effort. The pitter pat worked its way through, constant, softening the memory of discontinuous labors that had come before. Cilia from another vehicle brushed against her driver’s side door, but before long she had descended through the architectural pillars of the inner city to where a parking lot beckoned to wet, lonesome portioners. Near the entrance an attendant in a rubber smock offered her a mint from a bowl, which she took to shield the skin from stray raindrops. Besides him a wooly partner wrapped in the comfort of his own beard procured a flashlight, directing a blue cone of light to the floor. Throwing a handful of sand, a fraction of it stayed in the grip of the beam rather than falling. He wiggled his fingers, causing the sand to fashion itself into the frame of an umbrella. Phantomess made haste across five blocks and an intersection to the building that would host the local chapter of Concerned Parents, a group of ladies dedicated to sharing their own narratives in the art of childrearing. As they all were dueling with a common obstacle. Greeting her, a circle of empty chairs occupied the center of the room. Around the periphery, loose confederations of society clumped. “Okay everyone, it’s eight o’clock, get to your chairs and we’ll begin, '' the moderator squawked. By now the mint’s effects began to wane, and so steering her nervousness the patron took a seat among the other ladies. For some unknown reason, none of them recognized her. “Before we begin, I just want to welcome a new entry. Phan, can you stand up and introduce yourself?” she mentioned. “First of all, I’m just looking to ace the test in motherhood, and be bold and agile like a hawk. A hawk-mother if you will”. One of them on the other side of the circle shot up and flapped her arms like a bird, earning her a second round. For the first half of the evening the talk proceeded at an even pace with the recruits trading anecdotes, sharing strong and certain wisdom. The moderator certainly had moxie, the patron thought. Her questions were riveting, multifaceted. But then things took a hasty turn. “Can anyone give us some highlights on discipline?” the moderator inquired, pointing to one of the more reticent mothers that had not been eager enough to contribute. “Um … I guess I take his phone away when he doesn’t do what I ask” she shared politely. Phantomess couldn’t for the life of her understand why people used phones so often instead of just sending thoughts through the fiefdom, but that wasn’t on the docket today. Most treated that aspect as if it was old fashioned etiquette. And to be honest, the patrons did as well, as such intimacy is rarely needed in the daily frolic of social cares. “Ha! If you want results honey you have to take their spells away. “Hmm … I’m not sure that is such a good idea” Phantomess thought quietly to herself. Then the lady beside the speaker, her green shawl still dripping, let go of all her bottled-up angst in one quick pass, “Have you heard of Tame Yonder Frisbee? You know how they do that spell, turning frisbees into big platforms that hover above the ground and spin around. Whole groups of them ride the platform. They try to hold on instead of spinning off, and if one gets to the middle they transform into a strange geometric object with a bunch of vertices. Every week they keep thinking up other games. Of course, I had to take that one away from Danny when he crashed a frisbee into grandad’s house. We had to completely remodel the kitchen”. Phatnomess was starting to become concerned with how much magic these parents were willing to take away, but couldn’t help but keep from listening. The lady on the third chair to the left had one to even top that, “So, I’ll tell you what I did for my Jenny when she wasted her whole allowance. If you’d ever visit my house, you’d see those nature posters in her room, all these fields of beautiful sunflowers … tall and yellow and bright …. and she is a vegetarian. So, one day I told her we were going on a road trip. You should have seen her bouncing when she saw out the window where I was taking her. First time myself, but I couldn’t get distracted. In the middle there’s this little picnic area where the trail leads to. When she was done spinning around, looking at all the happy faces she came over to me and said, ‘Mom, what are we having for lunch?’. Oh ladies, that was my que. I took out the chart of all the onsurus she wasted that month so she knew I had pinned her down good. Then I took out of my purse a bag of sunflower seeds. Not only is she a vegetarian, my daughter loves sunflowers so much she won’t even eat the seeds. ‘Except for today’ I said, ‘you have to eat this whole bag or I’ll never give you an allowance again’. Jenny stood a few feet away. I sat on the picnic table and watched her, slowly filling her mouth with the seeds, handful after handful, crying like a puppy. At the end, I couldn’t help myself!” and she started laughing with the rest of them, manically like an evil mastermind. “Wait a second, that is really cruel!” Phan protested, leaping from her chair. Directly across the moderator turned to face the woman who had the nerve to cripple the progress of the proceedings, “Phan, you had your turn a minute ago. Maybe you should grow up and be a real mother, rather than standing there whining”. “I thought you were being impartial but I guess eventually the truth comes out. My son would never get that hard discipline. We have an understanding, and he’s too good for that” Phantomess lashed back, tired of their simple-minded remedies. “He’s probably a grown child!” the moderator hurled back, smiled audaciously. Phantomess shook, red-faced with countless eons of quiet restraint boiling to the surface. “I’ll give you one that’s so good you’ll never forget it. Try doing this for one week, Phan, and I’ll let you join our spell society without dues for a year. From the look of you it's clear you’re a real outsider. Maybe you came to the portion recently, but you don’t have to be alone, so listen. Ladies, this is real talk. My son Hobby didn’t bring back what I told him to from the store, so guess what I did next. All of his magic. Gone! That’s right honey, if you want to punish him good, you have to take all the spells away. Drain them dry” the moderator declared, keen beyond words. At that Phantomess had enough of the common rhetoric, and stood to leave. “I thought I would get something useful here, but I suppose I was wrong” and shunned the alpha as she swept to the doorway. Down the corridor there was a lunch area with snack counters where she stopped to rest, taking a deep breath. “Perhaps if I had just disciplined Catcher by taking away all his magic … then maybe he would have grown as normal and I would not have waited endlessly through all those long ages. Perhaps if I had done things differently. But would that have worked? Any other remedy may have been effective for a child patron in his condition. Every day in perpetual youth … Never! No, I would not have hurt him like that. It goes too far. My pain was the price for that, so how dare she say otherwise! I’m going to have a word to that so-called moderator’s face” she proscribed, catching her breath with both hands gripping the head-cushion of a booth table. Phantomess headed back into the room where the other had continued onto another topic. “Look who it is … come back to apologize mam?” the moderator offered generously. “When I said it was cruel to take away your kid’s magic, I was giving my honest opinion, so actually I think it’s you who needs to apologize to me” the newcomer countered, feeling sure of herself. The chair screeched slightly as the moderator rose, walked through the circle to the outside where the other woman stood patiently. For some reason the moderator thought it right to stick her nose quite close to her own, “You wanna rumble lady?”. Along the circle of chairs, the concerned mothers glanced at each other, expectantly. “What do you mean …” Phan began, except her sentence was cut short by a hard strike with the palm of a hand, reddening her cheek like a beet. “Nothing can happen, so I have to extinguish all my magic” the patron thought before returning the gift. By the way she had not taken her spectacles off, the moderator was clearly not expecting that. They crashed to the floor, shattering the glass. Zestfully the circle of concerned mothers cheered them on as they brawled across the room. The patron shouted back at the other person in her way, as every brush of hands endowed pain to her face and chest. More people from the other floors began to flock in to witness the scene, crowding the room, until a cultic officer barged through. “Enough of this, mam!” he cried, locking her arms behind and walking her back. “Don’t get me, she is full of hopscotch!” Phan hollered as the crowd of people huddled in the room belted out in reply. Most of the people on the left side, to where her back faced were rooting her on, while those on the right favored the moderator. Escorted from the room to the hallway, the newcomer was calmed and sent back to the parking deck. It was just a little better on the road, with much less spoiling traffic. Despite that, the rain had not ceased an undying flow of monotony, drumming against the windshield. Thoughts of Catcher and making breakfast day after day flashed in her mind like a spotlight. Cereal and bowls and spoons and pouring. Phantomess grumbled, awaiting the turn that would veer away to the west. It was something else, however, that could not melt away from all the sights and sounds. It stuck in her brain, an impenetrable tack, “Very annoying! If I had taken his magic away, this never would have happened”.